Why you shouldn't report cable theft

Don't ever report cable theft I mean how is it hurting you? Cabel theft doesn't affect people that pay for their cable doesn't decrease your cable quality at all so why should you report it? Here's the thing the cable company makes a lot of money if a few people steal cable big deal let them. (lol i just saw some commercial about how people should report cable theft).
 
Lost revenue means higher prices for the rest of us paying customers. It's like saying software piracy doesn't affect the gaming industry.
 
lol did you see that commercial also. The higher prices for paying customers results from the cable company paying for things like repairing lines and their internal systems and also paying for the right to air all the channels and stuff like that also they have to make a profit. Actually if 10% of the customers in an area are stealing their cable then either the cable company will do a little investigating and sue them also the less customers a cable company has the more likely they'll lower their prices to stimulate more customers nobody would increase their prices when faces with an abrupt decline in demand. In my area there's a cable monopoly only one service provider and they keep raising the prices all the time and who's to stop them(a government regulation agency LOL) sure they have to get permission to raise their prices and show why they need to do so, but in my area corruption is high if you know people you get by the system. so to finish my long ramble don't report cable theft it's a pointless thing(unless the cable company's going to give you something good in return).
 
Lost revenue means higher prices for the rest of us paying customers.

This is a weak argument. Revenue would be lost if a current paying customer decides to stop paying or pay less - for any reason. According to this argument, people shouldn't drop premium channels or switch to satellite systems or a roof antenna either, because that also means less revenue and higher prices for paying cable customers.

It's like saying software piracy doesn't affect the gaming industry.

Illegal software copying clearly affects the software industry, but the effects are complex and not well-understood. Typically, those (particularly the anti-piracy industry associations such as SPA, BSA, and IDSA) who claim that some specific amount of money was lost to software piracy in year 200X are essentially making the numbers up, because there is simply no way to get reliable numbers given the chaotic and decentralized nature of "software piracy" as a whole. The flip side, of course, can be found in the warez groups, who often tell people to buy the games if they like them. Yeah, that'll really get those dollars moving :wink:.
 
Agreed. The Anti-Pirate groups just pick #'s.The only reason most people get caught is 'cause A - they are dumb enough to call the developer and ask for support, or B - ex-employees "rat out " their former employees/ers . While I don't condone it, I agree with people who use a copy of word or such. The prices for the consumer are staggering. $300 for the office standard package !!! Also, software pirates have made compaines like microsoft what they are. Their easy stance made them #1 in the word processor software install base. ####, I could use star office ( which does get the job done for free ) but office is just familiar Don't fix what ain't broke... However, I do own a copy of office ( MSDN Subscriber ) ( Just in case anybody is watching !! )

Cable theft... That's illegal... Now if you have a sat. system, it's called a " hobby " ... God Bless America :)
 
Ex-Cyber, you do make good points. The way I look at it sometimes is if you weren't going to buy it anyway, there is no money lost to the industry if you pirate it. But I'm sure there are quite a few people out there that WOULD pay for it if they couldn't get it illegally. What those numbers are, we'll never know. AFAIK most first time offenders get a small fine and/or are strongly encouraged to pay for cable.

It reminds me of something my neighbor went through. When he was using a cracked version some software to generate eBay auctions, he was caught by the author. The author told him he could either pay twice the registration fee to register it, or face the consequences. He paid the fee. Without having any proof, I bet a lot of people would cave to the cable company when faced with "subscribe or face the consequences." Which, as mentioned before, seems to be one of their tactics.

I can't say I'm an expert on the whole issue, but you're right, we can't really trust these companies and their numbers. I never have. Certainly cable theft and/or piracy doesn't hurt the industry as much as they claim it does.

To sum it up (and I hope I'm making SOME sense so far) it's simple economics. For all the time you're NOT working, that's costing you. Let's say you have a job that pays $10 an hour. You stand around at home for 2 hours instead of going to work. You've just lost $20 plus whatever out of pocket expenses you might have during those two hours (ie: price of admission to movie). Same deal with the cable company. One hundred people decide to not pay $30 a month for cable and steal it instead. That's $3000 in lost revenue for the cable company per month.

Basically, we'll never know the figures, they can only estimate using flawed methods of polling and such. But there IS loss to piracy. Just no out of pocket expenses.

I'll do my best to reread that and make sure it makes sense. But if something doesn't make sense I'm sure you get the picture. And I'm not trying to start a war or anything, but have a sensable argument. I really don't give a hoot if anyone steals cable or not :)
 
I'm glad people steal cable from AT&T. Talk about a fricking rip off. My old cable company was $40 USD a month, and that was about 80 odd chanels, inluding all 15 premium chanels they offered on all TV's. Now with AT&T, to get the same amount of chanels available on only half of ours TV's on their shitty Digital Cable format cost's a good $20 more a month (not to metion the fee to install phone jacks's next to the two TV's that get all the channels). Rip off.
 
ya i think my cable bill is like 40 dollars a month and the cable broadband service is also 40 dollars per month it's a rip off and i can imagine what AT&T does to it's customers since they have a massive monopoly in a lot of areas. Got to love the there's other competitors out their the satellite systems argument.
 
"Ex-Cyber, you do make good points."

I try :).

"The way I look at it sometimes is if you weren't going to buy it anyway, there is no money lost to the industry if you pirate it. But I'm sure there are quite a few people out there that WOULD pay for it if they couldn't get it illegally."

From what I've seen, this is one of the key issues of the debate. The problem tends to be that there's a "pro-piracy" side that says they never would have bought the product/service, and an "anti-piracy" side that says they would have. Of course, nobody knows for sure, since we can't (yet) split off a parallel timeline/universe where it can't be gotten illegally and watch what happens. And, of course, there are no solid numbers due to the general statistics problem.

"It reminds me of something my neighbor went through. When he was using a cracked version some software to generate eBay auctions, he was caught by the author. The author told him he could either pay twice the registration fee to register it, or face the consequences. He paid the fee. Without having any proof, I bet a lot of people would cave to the cable company when faced with "subscribe or face the consequences." Which, as mentioned before, seems to be one of their tactics."

This is similar to one of the supposed tactics of the BSA (of which Microsoft is the principal member). I've even heard rumors of sites with unlicensed Office/Windows/etc. installs being offered discounts if that will mean making the sale. At some economic level, it could be the case that allowing the copying to take place initially creates a potential market that might not otherwise exist, because it fosters demand for licensed product in a twisted kind of way. This is the sort of thing I'm talking about when I say that the issue is complex, and one of the things I try to do is challenge people's assumptions about it in order to try to figure some of it out. Usually it doesn't go this well...
 
"This is similar to one of the supposed tactics of the BSA (of which Microsoft is the principal member). I've even heard rumors of sites with unlicensed Office/Windows/etc. installs being offered discounts if that will mean making the sale. At some economic level, it could be the case that allowing the copying to take place initially creates a potential market that might not otherwise exist, because it fosters demand for licensed product in a twisted kind of way. This is the sort of thing I'm talking about when I say that the issue is complex, and one of the things I try to do is challenge people's assumptions about it in order to try to figure some of it out. Usually it doesn't go this well..."

I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case. It's not really worth the company's time or money to go after everyone. If they did it would be more expensive to find and prosecute these people than it would be in lost revenue. Those that sell or distribute pirated software etc. are more likely to be targeted.

This might be a reason for the increase in anti cable theft ads on TV I've seen. They're probably trying to turn us on one another and scare us into buying cable.

I tend to think there are two types of people on the "pro-piracy" side. Those that would buy it if it were cheaper, and those that wouldn't even if it was. Some people like to pirate simply because they can. Those are the people you'll never win over. Depending on which group is larger, if cable companies were to lower their rates they would either see an increase in subscribers. This would lead to an increase in revenue. Conversely, they would make less if the oppostite were true. Will Time Warner ever decrease their rates to see? #### no. So we may have to wait until we can split our universe to find out. :)

Side note: the last increase in my cable bill actually came with a few new channels including ESPN2, Disney, The History Channel, and F/X. The increase in my cable modem bill was coupled with a decrease in my bandwidth. Figure that one out.
 
This might be a dumb point, but I am just offering up another view. Theres this buisness term called "shrinkage", and that basically means that the company figures out its projected losses from theft, damaged goods, and other mishaps. So if you think about it, in essence, the cable that is stolen is basically already calculated and paid for by the company...heh.

I would steal cable, cause there isnt anything on anyway, but I wouldnt steal cable net access.
 
Right. But the cable company would argue that they make up for that by raising prices for paying customers.

Part of what don't get about all this is "renting" cable boxes and/or modems. If we can all go out and buy our own, we should get discounted prices since we'd only be paying for the signal, not the "rental." For me at least, this isn't the case. For modems it might be compatibility issues. But I know that currently Time Warner won't let us go buy the same modem they have (which should work with their systems) and give us a discount. So who's ripping off who? Unless someone can give me a justifiable reason as to why we can't buy and use our own equipment and just pay for the service.
 
A good reason not to report cable theft:

NOONE LIKES A TATTLE-TALE

btw, the lost revenue thing is always going to be debatable.. ie;

software: if I had opportunity would I legitamately buy Kris Kross: Make My Video for Sega CD? #### no.. did they lose revenue from my copying it? No, because there was no hope of a sale in the first place.. Now of course, if i stole a copy from radio shack, radio shack is out the wholesale cost of that cd (thats the difference between theft/piracy.. in both cases the effect on sega is negligable.. i wouldnt pay for it anyways).. Sometimes it does count at a loss, sometimes people pirate/steal what they would otherwise have paid for. For the most part, citizens of western civilizations know stealing is wrong. I actually pay for games I play, or software I use. Legal or not, I have no moral problems with the hundreds of crappy titles I've archived and collect dust in my closet.

cable/sat piracy:

if I'm paying for standard cable, yet getting 'premium' cable through an illegal hookup, is the cable company hurt? Same as with software piracy: maybe.. Would I have paid for premium? probably not. Maybe I'd order wrestlemania, but I could really give 2 hoots about the other channels.

Of course I'm making the logical fallacy of arguing from the specific to the general..

Thing is, software companies look at every copy made as a lost sale, and cable companies look at every PPV not paid for as lost revenue. Just because someone watches wrestlemania doesnt imply that they would have paid to do so. This is convenient for them, its an enormous tax-writeoff, it lets them send lobbyists out with bloated, extreme figures.

You cant very well lobby for anti-piracy legislation like the DMCA with a tagline of 'we lose anything from 0-100 billion a year, mebbe even make a lil on free publicity'.. Would have been alot harder to shut napster down if they'd used the research that showed napster users bought more music on average. Easier to say every mp3 leeched is another sale lost..

so whats the point of all this ranting? none really.. I just wish society had a lil more common sense.. people know stealing is wrong.. that simple moral guideline will now and forever minimize any losses from any company. less than 1/2 of 1% shoplift, and I'd imagine a similar ratio of legitimate customers to pirates in industry.

maybe more, on second thought.. profiteering in all forms of media is so rampant, it's harder and harder to see cable theft and software piracy as 'immoral'. the solution is probably a fair and trustworthy relationship with the customers, that doesnt leave them feeling ripped off every time theres an unexpected rate-hike, hidden fee, expensive upgrade, etc.. that'll never happen.. easier to pay lobbyists to legislate your companies success than to pay management to run it fairly..
 
Of course I'm making the logical fallacy of arguing from the specific to the general..

If you are, I missed it.

You cant very well lobby for anti-piracy legislation like the DMCA with a tagline of 'we lose anything from 0-100 billion a year, mebbe even make a lil on free publicity'..


In fact, they managed to kill two birds with one stone. They not only managed to get it passed, they also drew attention away from the more important issue - control. Unauthorized copying was already illegal; Title 17 Chapter 12 takes it a step further and effectively makes it illegal to use a work without authorization.
 
stealing is immoral? strange people shouldn't put value on material possesions. never really understood the bible that teaches about how people shouldn't want material values and stuff like that yet at the same time one of the commandments is thou shal not steal. what ever everything in life should be free but that'll never happen.

(Edited by jim993 at 11:51 pm on Jan. 21, 2002)
 
I'm going to start reporting bandwidth theft for websites that are pointless and useless and taking up my bandwidth.

Think that will get me anywhere?
 
Quote: from Cynnamin on 6:44 pm on Jan. 21, 2002

I'm going to start reporting bandwidth theft for websites that are pointless and useless and taking up my bandwidth.

Think that will get me anywhere?

We can only dream :/
 
Why the #### should I have to pay money for cable while others get it for free!?

You're probably just saying that since you probably do it yourself.

If I do find somebody pirating cable, I'll #### right report them, because it's unfair to me for someone to get something for free for no reason while I have to pay a high ass price due to loss of income because of them.
 
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